


Every second left

by Philipa_Moss



Category: Versailles (TV 2015)
Genre: Brothers, Build your own happy ending, Family, Gen, Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, History, Humor, M/M, Past Character Death, Platonic Soulmates, Post-Canon, Terrible things happen to kings, a tiny Lion in Winter crossover of sorts, like: significantly post-canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-05-31 22:46:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15129392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philipa_Moss/pseuds/Philipa_Moss
Summary: It is a miracle most of them are here, frankly.(The crypt in the Basilica of St. Denis is a party after dark. The Princess Palatine is learning modern history via eavesdropping, Louis is trapped at the reunion from hell, the Chevalier is nowhere to be found, and Philippe has feelings about all these things.)





	Every second left

During the day, there are tourists. Philippe watches them from a recess behind the third column on the left. He wishes he were corporeal in a way they’d understand, not this conceptual mass that can still fuck in the one Euro toilets after dark, but can’t scare the living daylights out of a nine year old standing in the Bourbon crypt, whining over a brand new iPhone.

Philippe is a Prince of France; he knows when a kid is spoiled.

The place comes alive after dark, ancestors and weird cousins crawling out from gaps in stone to float upstairs and bother the boring Capetians on the ground floor. For the first couple hundred years, Philippe went along with it. Nothing went wrong exactly, it just became more and more obvious that Charles Martel was about as sharp as a hammer and Clovis was a patronizing bastard. It’s more fun underground with his family. Well, most of them anyway.

Honoré, the peasant playing his father’s skull, is good for a laugh. On paper, that particular situation is fairly fucking dire, but Philippe isn’t like Louis, insisting on decorum even though they’re all rotting communally. Philippe is going to get his joy where he can find it, even if that means trading ribald jokes with Honoré or tripping his great-great-great-grandnephew, the one who got them into this mess. Not death, but what followed.

It’s hard to remember the potter’s field, even harder to remember what came before it. Philippe’s earliest coherent memories as a ghost coincide perfectly with the realization that he would never see his father again; whatever royalist idiots dug them all out of the ground had carted the wrong skull with them back to St. Denis. In the place of of Louis XIII, here now was Honoré, a man with a bandage over one eye and a frankly stupid hat, born sixty years after Philippe died.

It is a miracle most of them are here, frankly. When Philippe considers the way his bones—his family’s bones—had been left to mingle with the soil of an unmarked grave, he comes perilously close to an expression of grief.

“Oh no,” says Liselotte, poofing into nonexistence at his shoulder. “It’s the face again. He’s making the face.” She says this as though she is setting up a joke for a double act, although she hasn’t been a member of a double act in quite some time.

“I am making nothing of the kind,” says Philippe, quelling the sadness like ectoplasm suddenly threatening to choke him. Real sadness like this—not the intellectual sadness of recognizing a bad turn of history, but the real pain of missing one particular face—doesn’t come around as often any more. That, Philippe supposes, is one of the perks of being dead.

“You are,” says Liselotte. “A face like you’re holding back a poo.”

“I have not held back a poo,” Philippe says in his haughtiest tones, “in over three hundred years.”

Liselotte, to her credit, says nothing.

“That child who was just here,” Philippe says. “Did he remind you of anyone?”

“Your brother,” she says immediately. “The trouble is, when you upgrade to a new mistress, they don’t take your old mistress away and put her in the dead phone drawer.” Liselotte eavesdrops with academic fervor, and as a result has gleaned more about the world passing by outside than most. “Or they do, but then you die too and one thing leads to another and the two of you wind up in the same pile of bones in the same crypt.”

 

*

 

Fucking in the toilet doesn’t feel like much, but it feels like something. Philippe doesn’t get too hung up on the fact of a shared bloodline. If he did, he never would have married in life. And in addition: what does it matter? He’s dead.

He says as much to Louis when Louis catches him with Philippe Auguste’s (no surprise there) cock down his throat. Philippe Auguste is the least boring of the old guard. To whit: he is down here pulling Philippe’s hair out at the roots while his compatriots attend a poetry reading or some shit upstairs.

Courtly love gives Philippe the runs.

It is amusing, at least, to watch Louis try to grapple with what he’s seen, as Philippe Auguste tucks himself back in to his tunic and Philippe wipes his mouth with a square of toilet paper even though there’s no need. Philippe Auguste doesn’t ejaculate any more than Philippe excretes. Still.  

“Philippe,” Louis begins, then, “Brother,” he says. Louis is increasingly prone to addressing Philippe this way. When he uses his given name in company, dozens of heads turn. Philippe forebears to point out that “brother” is even more inexact, and that “Louis” and “Your Majesty” aren’t exactly “Balthus” and “Zénon” around here. He would never admit it, but it warms him a little to still be called brother in this cold place.

“That is our…” Louis trails off. Philippe can see him trying to do arithmatic in his head. Philippe Auguste leans against the hand dryer. “Ancestor,” Louis concludes after some time. “That is our ancestor. This is unseemly.”

“Ah,” says Philippe. “As opposed to making eyes at your great-great-great-granddaughter-in-law. I would have thought you had one French queen too many on your hands down here.”

Louis flushed. “I don’t know what you thought you saw…”

“Or were you looking for a seam?” Philippe asks. “I did wonder at first myself, how her head was reattached, though I think it was severed a touch higher than your inspection.”

“I was not looking for a seam,” Louis says with considerable hauteur. “If we arrived in the state in which we died, our kinsman here would want nothing to do with you.”

“Five valets in St. Cloud beg to differ,” says Philippe.

Philippe Augustus coughs and Philippe wonders idly what he thinks of all this. Philippe Auguste screwed Eleanor of Aquitaine’s favorite son, they say, and is still alive to tell the tale. So to speak.

“Nevertheless,” says Louis. “This is a madhouse, but we mustn’t give in.”

If anyone has gone mad, Philippe reflects, it’s Louis. Being surrounded by kings would do that to a person.

Philippe Auguste appears to agree. “There there,” he says, then fakes a massive yawn. “My goodness, would you look at the time.” He shoots Philippe a wink and then edges his way out past the broken tampon dispenser.

Once he is gone, the atmosphere cools. Philippe can hear the sound of EDM upstairs and wonders what witchcraft Catherine de Médicis pulled off to make that happen. “It’s just a little fun,” he explains. Surely Louis can understand that. He’s the one living 1662 all over again, with the same wife and mistress in residence. “I’m dead, not…dead.”

“You know,” says Louis, and now he sounds exhausted, “I can’t believe I’m about to say this.” He leans against the sink. “Sometimes I wish the Chevalier were here.”

 

*

 

Philippe hasn’t seen the Chevalier de Lorraine in centuries. He doesn’t know where he is. Liselotte tries to make him talk about it, but he doesn’t want to talk about it. He doesn’t miss the bastard. He’s fine.

It’s just that sometimes he does, actually, miss him, if he’s being honest. Or: he actually misses him so much his entire spectral core glows pink-hot. Or: one of the tourists used the phrase “on again, off again” one day and Philippe couldn’t stop thinking about it. Off again, he thinks. Off again.

He can’t ask Liselotte, not after putting her off for so long. He still has some face to save. When Philippe musters the courage to ask, Louis XV says the Chevalier is dead. “Obviously,” says Philippe. He wishes he had a fan to twirl. He wishes he had a big skirt to hide the nervous motion of his feet. “But where?”

“I don’t know,” says Louis XV. “I wasn’t even born yet. Ask your son.”

Philippe groans. He would really rather not. On this plane, Philippe II appears to be a good two decades older than Philippe and has a tiresome habit of talking down to him.

Louis XV’s face softens. He would probably call it sympathy, but it is clearly pity. Philippe wants to punch him. “What do you hope to learn? There is no good news here.”

Philippe draws himself up. He thinks of it as his charging bear pose. Louis was most frequently the charging bear, of course. “I want to know where he is,” says Philippe. “As to why, that is none of your concern.”

“Hmm.” Louis XV glances up, as though the gaudy, fleurs-de-lys-covered stained glass contains the answer.

“Never mind,” Philippe snarls. “I’ll ask my son.”

But Philippe II is busy. He has his head together with Anne de Bretagne and Henri IV and the three of them look so stupendously, collectively dull that Philippe turns and leaves. He runs straight into Liselotte, who is wearing a smug smile like she already knows. She might. Over the past three hundred years, she’s been developing an off-putting near-omniscience.

“Oh leave it,” says Philippe, though it’s too much to hope she will actually leave. The two of them are very good at not leaving each other. No one saw that coming, least of all Philippe.

“My predecessor,” says Liselotte, “is crying in the apse. Again.”

“Henriette?” Philippe asks.

“Of course,” says Liselotte. “Is it too much to tell your first wife to buck up, do you think? Or would that be terribly rude?”

“I don’t know,” Philippe says. “I think I was rude to her sometimes. Maybe even cruel.”

Liselotte cocks her head. “What’s gotten into you? You sound middle aged. You never sounded middle aged before.”

“Nothing,” says Philippe. “I’ve been thinking. Isn’t a man allowed to think?”

Liselotte perches on an informational placard. She sinks into it a little before pulling herself together. “Do you want to know?” she asks. “I heard you’ve been asking.”

“Yes,” says Philippe, as exhausted as he’s been in recent memory. “I give up. Yes. Tell me what you know.”

When they were alive and living together and they had been living together for a long time and had run out terrible things to say to one another and the Chevalier was off again, Liselotte looked at Philippe the way she’s looking at him now. Maybe the only other person to look at him like that is Louis, and Louis hates getting caught out. Philippe has heard by now that after he died, Louis cried for days. Louis said, “I cannot believe I will never see my brother again.” When Louis realized he was wrong, when he saw Philippe waiting at the head of the crypt stairs, he cried all over again, and then pretended it was something in the air. Philippe isn’t sure he understands what air is anymore, but he knows his brother loves him.

Liselotte hums. “Once upon a time,” she says.

“Don’t,” says Philippe. “Tell me.”

“Well, first of all,” says Liselotte, “he wrote to me after you died. He didn’t say anything about it. He talked about his tailor.”

“Oh no,” says Philippe. He can imagine it. The Chevalier was massively fond of the pretense of callousness. It was one of his top three moves.

“Yes,” Liselotte agrees. “Grief-stricken. And then he died. Not immediately, but soon enough. He’d been with whores the night before.”

Philippe can see it. He takes a minute to imagine it in exquisite detail. “Excellent.”

“All right,” says Liselotte. She has the measure of him. “Then he was buried.”

“Where?” asks Philippe. “Can’t you tell me?”

“In the ground,” says Liselotte. “In Paris. Does it matter where? It’s not here. It’s dark and full of worms and mushrooms. He’s alone. Maybe he’s properly dead, moved on to wherever he ought to be, not trapped here like us.”

“You think that’s better?” Philippe asks.

“Maybe,” Liselotte muses. “Depends on where. It’s eternity either way.”

“He would hate that,” says Philippe. “Worms. He would hate that.”

Liselotte doesn’t have anything to say to that. She’s faded out a little, as though telling the story has sapped her of something vital. Philippe takes a seat on the placard next to her. He takes her hand. “Thank you for telling me,” he says.

“I’m sorry it’s not a happier story,” says Liselotte, “and for your sake I wish he were here, though I haven’t much minded having you to myself.”

“I haven’t minded either,” says Philippe. “I just wish sometimes…”

“I know,” says Liselotte, though of course she can’t know. The only choices she made in life were carefully orchestrated to trap her. Philippe was trapped, too. He’s still trapped. But he takes comfort in disapproval. That’s how he knows he’s made a choice, and won. He would choose the Chevalier a thousand times again, despite everything.

The basilica around them has gone very quiet. It’s almost like being alone. Philippe squeezes some color back into Liselotte’s hand.

 

*

 

They still say mass in the basilica. Philippe hasn’t gone since he got here, but today he does. He sits in the back row because he is a good Catholic. Or: he’s Catholic and he knows how these things work. He can’t take communion, not that he wants to. He wouldn’t mind a sip of wine, though death is a kind of drunkenness; he fades in and out, he says what he wants, and nothing matters at all.

The priest welcomes the tourists. It hadn’t occurred to Philippe until now that they could be welcomed. They are an imposition and they gawk, like nobles new to Versailles. They remind Philippe that there is a world outside and he’s missing it. They remind him that, once again, he’s locked in a building with his brother and nowhere else to go.

Maybe some of them do deserve to be welcomed. Just the other day, after all, one man took another man’s hand outside Philippe’s shared tomb and they walked away through the crypt hand in hand. It frustrates Philippe that, from what he’s heard, from what Liselotte tells him at the end of at day’s eavesdropping, navigating the world hand in hand like can still require almost as much bravery as it did when Philippe was alive and a prince. It makes him wish he were still alive, if only to put on a gown, ostentatious yet practically cut, and follow these two tourists around and kill anyone who challenges them. Philippe could do it. He once killed a man with his horse’s reins and when he came back to Versailles they still laughed when they thought he wasn’t listening.

Philippe knows that they’re all in here together, a bundle of royal bones and Honoré, because the real world is harder and harsher than anything he’s experienced. It’s startling to realize, after more than three hundred years, that he would use his freedom to follow two strangers and protect them from harm. The Chevalier would laugh. He would pout for days that Philippe hadn’t left St. Denis to come straight to him. He would recover. He would pull Philippe down through the dirt and make a place for him.

“What’s this,” says Louis, appearing at Philippe’s shoulder. He whispers out of respect, even though he could be yelling and the priest and congregants couldn’t hear him. “Don’t tell me you’ve found religion.”

Philippe ignores him. “What would you do,” he whispers back, “with a day out there?”

Louis goes very still. Then he smiles. “I’d go home,” he says.

The fountains are still there. The mirrors are cleaner than they’ve ever been. Philippe has seen them all over tourists’ shoulder as they rest their legs and flick through their camera roll. The throne is empty. Anyone could sit there. At the back of his reconstituted skull, Philippe feels the throb of phantom ambition. Then he thinks of the worms and is taken over by longing.

“I would too,” Philippe says to his brother. “Home. Just for a day.”

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know, guys. I visited St. Denis and had thoughts.
> 
> Title from "Die 4 You" by Perfume Genius.


End file.
